Avoid the Pitfalls Philippians 3:4-14
1. Paul desires to Press on even during the pit falls of life
• On the surface, Paul’s life looked pretty good. He writes about it in the first verses of this chapter:“...circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (3:5-6).
• Saul thought he had it made, But there was one problem: he felt spiritually dead
2. Paul was a hunter, a persecute-er, and a Christian destroyer
• He hunted down Christians and turning them over to the authorities.
• It’s very possible the more he saw of Christians and their simple, joyful way of living, the more he began to wonder what was missing in his own life.
• The book of Acts tells how Saul “Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison” (Acts 8:1-3).
• Saul, was not a nice man. Acts tells how he was “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (9:1).
3. Thank God He Heard the voice or he may have stayed stuck in his hatred
• Then he heard a voice one day, on the Road to Damascus — the voice of Jesus, saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
• The Hunter, the persecute-er, the destroyer had become a Christ-follower
• Years later, he wrote these words to the Philippians, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
4. In order to avoid the pitfalls of life we need to forsake the pull of the past Paul did
• The past is our worst enemy. Things happened in all our pasts. Terrible, painful things. These things in the past just put simply they haunt us.
• There’s an old story about the famous baseball pitcher, Orel Hershiser. In a book, Out of the Blue, Hershiser shares the secret of his success. Throughout his years of playing, He acquired the ability to concentrate on the next pitch, and the next pitch only. He refused to worry about bad pitches he’d thrown, or bad calls the umpire might have made. The only thing he focused on was the next pitch.
• The next pitch is like Yesterday is over and done with. We can’t change it, but it surely can change us, if we let it.
5. In order to avoid the pitfalls of life think on The Call of the Future
• Paul speaks of this as “straining forward to what lies ahead.”
• Paul tells us “press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
• Paul I think believes there is an end goal there’s a goal in mind, a finish line.
• There’s a true story that happened in a German POW camp during World War II., the American prisoners had managed to scrape together enough components to build a radio. One day, news came over the radio that the German high command had surrendered. Suddenly, a change came over the prisoners, They sang, they waved at the guards and smiled,, they shared jokes at dinner
• On the fourth day the prisoners awoke to discover that their captors had fled, leaving the gates of the camp wide open. Their life had been different during the past few days than it had been in all the preceding years. The difference, of course, was the news they heard of something sure to happen in the future. That future promise made all the difference.
• We too have a future promise. It’s the promise of our faith, the promise that God isn’t finished with us yet, and the promise that one day all that is now blurry will be made clear.
• Because we have heard that promise, and know it to be true, we can get up from the place we are
• And move on, To the eye of faith, it’s always a new day! Lets get out of the pitfalls
